


can you remind me of what it was like at the top of the world?

by pandoradeloeste



Category: The AM Archives (Podcast), The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Tier 5 trauma, being a basic tourist, dramatic family reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29627754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandoradeloeste/pseuds/pandoradeloeste
Summary: “Shit, Em, you kiss our mother with that mouth?”A soft gasp, and a clatter as something dropped on the other end of the line. “Oliver?”“Yeah, it’s me.”Oliver gets out of the AM and stumbles into a family reunion.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: Happy Birthday Marcus





	can you remind me of what it was like at the top of the world?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefigureinthecorner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/gifts).



> Happy birthday Marcus!

The lights of downtown Chicago glittered as the sun set behind the Sears Tower (the day Oliver started calling it Willis Tower would be the day hell froze over). Watching the sky behind the buildings turn orange and blue while eating the contents of the minibar in a bathrobe was deliciously louche after three years of scratchy ill-fitting hospital scrubs and no view except blank white walls.

Oliver’s new phone lay on the bed behind him. There were three numbers programmed into it: Lee Meal Ticket Sandoval, Mark Byron Coma Guy #1, and a third that Samantha Barnes had tracked down as a final “thank you for helping us stop a murderous frequency manipulator, sorry about the three years of imprisonment and torture” gift. He’d called the first number a few times: once to ask for a few days between his official release from the AM and beginning his work with the Order, and once to arrange the flight to Tel Aviv from O’Hare. The second already had a flurry of texts, including a selfie in front of the Bean because _fuck you Byron,_ he’d been underground for three years and he’d earned the right to be a basic tourist. The third number. . .

Three years of barely talking to anyone hadn’t been kind to his social skills, and they hadn’t been great to begin with. Maybe he should wait a week or two and see if they came back. She deserved better than a stilted conversation with someone who barely remembered how to be a person anymore. On the other hand, who knew what time zone he’d be in later, or even if he’d have reception. And if she ever found out he’d been in Chicago and hadn’t called, she might _actually_ kill him.

He sat down, took a deep breath, and called before he could lose his nerve again.

“Kowalski residence,” said a heartbreakingly familiar voice, clipped and impatient.

Oliver opened his mouth and couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

The voice sighed and hissed, “Son of a _bitch,_ will you jackoffs take me _off_ your fucking list -” and he finally found his voice.

“Shit, Em, you kiss our mother with that mouth?” It came out shaky and a little hysterical, but at least it was out.

A soft gasp, and a clatter as something dropped on the other end of the line. “ _Ollie?_ ”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh my god. _Oliver._ Oh my _god._ ” Quick steps, muffled voices, and then a door shutting. “Jesus _Christ._ Wh - how - where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said unsteadily. “I’m in town, and I’m okay.”

“ _Oh_ my god, you _fucking asshole_ , I’m going to murder you myself and dump your body in the river, do you have _any fucking idea_ how worried we’ve all been? I filed a missing person’s report _three fucking years ago -_ ”

There was no stopping Emma when she was in high dudgeon, and Oliver didn’t try. He put the phone on speaker, put it on the bedside table, and let her voice wash over him like an old lullaby while he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He wanted to laugh or cry, and either way, if he started he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said when she paused for breath. He had a feeling he was going to spend the next twenty-four hours making a lot of apologies for things that weren’t his fault. 

“You know how many coroner’s offices I have on speed dial right now? Do you have any idea how many John Does I’ve looked at, just in case one of them was you? I. . .I thought you were _dead,_ ” she gasped in a broken voice that made Oliver clench his jaw until it hurt.

“I was -” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I was on a job.” The Order had been very clear that his employment was contingent on nobody in his family finding out about the AM, even if Emma already knew about his ability. Luckily Oliver’s old job had been full of security clearances and classified information, and everyone was grudgingly used to him being vague about his job. 

“You couldn’t call? Email? Send me a fucking letter? _Something?_ ”

“No, actually, I couldn’t. You know how these jobs are.”

“Jesus. I fucking _hate_ your line of work sometimes.”

“I know,” he said with feeling. “Me, too.”

She sniffed. “You missed Matt’s wedding.”

He sat forward. “Matt’s _what?_ ”

“You remember his boyfriend, right? They finally got hitched.”

“Holy _shit._ ” He hadn’t even considered that same-sex marriage would be legal now. The possibilities that had opened up were dizzying.

“I know, right? It only took them two years!”

Emma spent the next fifteen minutes catching Oliver up on all the Ritz family gossip of the past five years - Matt’s wedding, David’s promotion, Grace getting arrested at multiple protests, Anneke starting kindergarten, Dad’s retirement. . .

Emma stopped in mid-sentence. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

“You said it, I didn’t,” Oliver said automatically.

“Shut up, Ollie. _The party tomorrow._ Oh my god, you have to come!”

“Party?” He blinked stupidly at the phone.

“Mom’s 70th birthday?”

Oliver was light-headed for a moment as he realized how unmoored in time and space he’d come. “Emma, can’t we just get together for coffee? I’m not sure I can -”

“Um, _no?_ We haven’t seen you in _five years._ We thought you were _dead_ for the past three. You’re coming, and that’s final. You remember how to get to my house, right?”

He gave up. “Give me the address again?”

Two El trains could have easily taken Oliver from his hotel to Emma’s house by University of Chicago, but he was flush with cash and there was no reason not to take a cab. Besides, the El made his skin crawl, and it was almost unbearable when it went underground. Another fun souvenir of his kidnapping, apparently, but at least he could throw money at this problem. He wasn’t going to be able to buy his way out of not remembering how to be in a room full of loud Ritzes. Assuming they didn’t kill him on sight for disappearing for three years, or for leaving again almost immediately.

The brownstone looked exactly the way he remembered it, but with a clump of children playing in the street and others sitting on the front steps with smart phones and tablets. One of them looked like a miniature Emma, and he realized with a start that it was Anneke. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been two weeks old and the length of his forearm. She looked up when he approached the house, and her brow wrinkled the same way Emma’s had when they were kids.

“Hi,” Oliver said stiffly. He’d never been good with children, even before three years of mostly-solitary confinement had wrecked his social skills. “Is Em - is your mom here?”

“Who are you?” another kid asked, moving to stand in front of Anneke and taking in Oliver’s wrinkled clothes and overnight bag slung over his shoulder with a truly disturbing amount of disdain.

“I’m Oliver,” he said. “I guess I’m your. . .uncle?”

He extended his hand awkwardly to the kid, who ignored it. “Everyone’s inside,” he said, already dismissing the awkward ill-dressed grown-up in favor of. . .whatever game was popular with kids these days. (Angry Birds? Did kids still play that?) Anneke kept watching him warily as he climbed the steps, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

The smell hit him first: onions, meat, and frying dough, the smell of every Ritz family reunion. Oliver remembered standing on a footstool in front of the stove, before he was old enough to join Emma and their mother rolling out dough and folding it over the filling, holding a slotted spoon and an egg timer and watching for pierogi to float to the top of the pot of water. Before the AM, they were his comfort food and his go-to contribution to office potlucks. Now they smelled like all the potlucks and Hanukkahs he'd never get back.

He dragged himself back to the present. There was plenty of time to indulge in useless anger and trips down memory lane on his flight tonight. He had more pressing concerns right now.

Voices drew him toward the living room. Matt, Emma, David, Grace, and another man were standing by the window. David was holding forth about the same Pathfinder campaign he’d been running since before Oliver had gone into the AM, and the new guy - probably Matt’s husband, Oliver had only met him a few times - was listening politely while Matt and Grace exchanged amused looks over their drinks. Emma kept glancing out the window and fidgeting with her phone. She’d lost weight and her hair had gone grayer since the last time he’d seen her.

For a long, dizzy moment Oliver was frozen in the doorway, running his thumb over the shoulder strap of his bag and trying to think of what to say. He was seized with the crazy urge to run, turn around and leave this house of strangers with too-grown children and siblings who’d been married and arrested and _living_ while he’d been trapped underground forgetting how to be a functioning human being.

Matt’s husband - _Jake,_ that was it - solved the problem for him by glancing at him and smiling quizzically. Grace followed his gaze and gasped, and then all the Ritz siblings were staring at him with varying degrees of shock, horror, and joy.

Emma recovered first. “You _drama queen,_ why didn’t you tell me you were on your way?” she huffed as she dropped her phone and crossed the room to hug him, knocking the bag off his shoulder. “I missed you so much,” she whispered.

“I missed you too,” he said hoarsely, and reminded himself to hug her back as he tried to breathe normally.

Emma hugging him seemed to have broken everyone else’s paralysis, because he was suddenly at the center of a clump of Ritzes, all talking at once and trying to hug him, or at least rub his back or his shoulders. Being touched for comfort and connection was novel again after years of being unceremoniously shoved around once every few days. It made him jumpy and his skin felt like it was buzzing. He would have put up with a hundred times worse.

“Oliver, what the _fuck?_ Where did they have you stationed this time, Antarctica?” Matt asked brightly, but he’d never been good at hiding when he was hurt.

“You don’t want to know,” Oliver said, trying for world-weary nonchalance. “I’m sorry I missed the wedding. Welcome to the family, Jake,” he added. “Most of our parties aren’t this dramatic.”

“Did they feed you, like, at all?” Grace said, holding up his wrist appraisingly. “Mom's going to have a _fit_ when she sees you.”

Oliver didn’t have time to make up a lie to explain prison food that was sometimes poisoned, because as if summoned, Irina’s voice drifted into the living room. “All right, who got here this time. . .” Her voice trailed off in a punched-out _oh_ when she saw Oliver.

"Hi, Mom," Oliver said, trying to smile and feeling like his face was made of wood.

His mother crossed the room, and he barely saw her hand move before the slap knocked his glasses crooked and pain flashed bright and freezing across his cheek. "How _dare_ you," she hissed as he blinked away tears, and Grace and David gasped. “Do you have _any idea_ how frantic we’ve been? Do you know how close I - _we_ came to saying kaddish for you?" Her voice cracked on the last word. “Do _not_ try to tell me you got distracted by an experiment for _three years_ -”

"Mom, it's okay, I already yelled at him," Emma was saying softly, laying a hand on her arm as Oliver rubbed feeling back into his cheek. They’d been doing this dance since they were old enough to talk: Emma would curse him out in private, and five minutes later fight tooth and nail at his side.

“No, I want to hear it from him!” She shook Emma’s hand off and wiped her eyes angrily. “What was so important that you couldn’t pick up the phone and tell your mother you were alive?” 

“Kinda wondering that myself,” David muttered.

All of the lies he’d rehearsed last night fell apart under the weight of three years of torture and the hot shame of making his mother cry. He managed to choke out one more “I’m sorry” before he started sobbing, hard and harsh and so abrupt he barely had time to take his glasses off.

“Oh hell,” she whispered shakily, and then her arms were around him. “Shh, we’ll talk about it later, it’s okay, you’re okay. . .” 

She kept murmuring comforting nonsense through her own tears, which only made him cry harder. He dimly heard muttering and footsteps as his brothers and sisters left the room. It was a nice gesture, but Oliver didn’t have room to be grateful or embarrassed because his body had apparently decided now was a good time to release some of the anger and frustration and guilt of the past three years.

He wasn't sure how long he stood with his head on her shoulder before he wound down. Long enough for him to realize that he could probably cry for the next hundred years and not run out of rage and sorrow, but bodies had limits, and his had decided it was done for now. "Ugh, sorry for ruining your birthday," he said wetly as he pulled back and wiped his face.

"You came home," she said softly and cupped his cheek. "This is already the best birthday I've had in years. Come on, let's go find the others."

Later he would have to break the news to everyone that he was leaving tonight for another cryptic job, albeit one that would let him call home. There would be more recriminations, and probably more tears. But for now, there was a kitchen that smelled of pierogi and a family that would eventually forgive him, and for at least a few hours, he was home.


End file.
